Frequently Asked Questions about the department

What is an EECS Department?

In many schools Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Computer Science are found in at least two different departments. This usually results in a department organization similar to that shown below.

An EECS Department typically has a broader scope of technical activities and more overlap in research and teaching than separate departments or an ECE department. Examples of EECS Departments include MIT, Michigan, Berkeley and Harvard. A diagrammatic description of CWRU’s EECS Department is shown below where the formal BS degrees CWRU offers are shown outside the hexagon.

What are the reasons why or why not you might encourage a student to consider attending the Case School of Engineering? And the EECS department in particular?

Some factors which are significant in our estimation:

CWRU has an EECS department which allows students to "relatively" freely move between the EECS department's degree programs. This is very important if you are not sure of your career interests. For example, Michigan, Berkeley and MIT are EECS programs; Carnegie Mellon has an ECE (Electrical & Computer Engineering) department in the School of Engineering and a separate School of Computer Science. In terms of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science the greatest differences between engineering schools lie in where Computer Science is found. Most engineering schools are organized as either as separate departments or as ECE departments with Computer Science sometimes being found as a separate department in engineering, a separate school, possibly within a math department, or even in a business school. Where Computer Science is situated will be reflected in the type of courses offered, faculty research interests, the student’s ability to change degree programs and so forth.

A CWRU student has the ability to do many specialized programs ranging from CO-OP to an integrated BS/MS program. For example, an undergraduate BS/MS student has the ability to do a BS in one program and the MS in another and often does. This is very important for career specialties which bring together disparate fields. For example, students do a BS in Electrical Engineering and a MS in Computer Engineering. Other students have earned dual BS degrees in areas as disparate as Electrical Engineering and Political Science. In addition, we offer specialized programs such as Junior Year Abroad, a MS program in Engineering & Management, etc.

The strong emphasis on research. A summary of EECS research areas can be found here.

What are some of the department's research areas?

Some examples of department research activities include:

MicroElectromechanical Systems (MEMS)
Advanced metrology and nanodevices:
Automation and Intelligent Systems
The department also participates in research collaborations with faculty in other departments and institutions. Examples include:
Biorobotics with Mechanical Engineering and Biology
Computational Genomics with the Medical School
Biomedical MEMS with The Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Medical Imaging with University Hospitals
Space Communications with NASA Glenn Research Center

Can you give any examples of what current students are doing?

In addition to the above research descriptions you might consider the following profiles of student who were present at our Fall 2001 open houses and answered questions about what they were doing at Case:

Andy Cross - He developed a numerical electrodynamic model to predict the propagation of light through man-made crystals. He is a BS student who plans to go to graduate school for his PhD in quantum communications. He is also double majoring in music.
Chris Connelly - As a junior he performed a CO-OP in wireless digital communications and data security. He is currently a BS/MS student who is continuing this CO-OP experience into a MS thesis on wireless network security.
Ron Lazebnik - Ron is a BS/MS student who is interested in artificial intelligence and neural networks. He is currently doing research in how to apply neural networks to force feedback control of robots for his MS thesis.
John Lambert - John is the current president of the CWRU student chapter of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), the premier professional society for computer scientists. He is also a BS/MS student doing research in software design and testing and a past winner of a Microsoft Programming Award.

Not all students get as involved in research as these. There are many other career opportunities and interest paths for EECS students. For example, in one of our classes last spring we discovered that three out of twelve students in the class had companies, and another student was planning to start a company.

Here are some examples of what other recent students have done

Computer Science student Alec Derbes spent his co-op working at the northernmost tip of Alaska, utilizing nationwide Web chats to disseminate information from an expedition with the National Oceanic and Atrmospheric Administration (NOAA) West Coast and Polar Regions Undersea Reseaqrch Center, Santa Clara University, NASA and the U.S. Coast Guard. Scientists from these organizations have been trying to locate the New Bedford Whaling fleet which became trapped in the waters near Icy Cape in 1871 and sunk.
Electrical Engineering major Jeremy Protas served in a co-op at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, one of fifteen NAA complexes in the United States and the center of NASA's planetary exploration program. Jeremy worked within the Transmitter Group, which is responsible for a worldwide system of antennas that communicate with NASA's planetary science missions. Jeremy was also involved with a wireless power transmission project under contract by a group working with the Chernobyl power plant.
Niuniu Ji, a systems and control engineering major, has been awarded a highly prized Rhodes Scholarship and has begun a two-year study at Oxford University in England to complete an honors B.A. in economics and management.

Students also participate in various student organizartions

What if I am not sure what my major will be?

It is important to note that Case students do not declare a major when they initially start their freshman year. All students have a common freshman year which should be used in part to learn more about career options by attending department seminars, etc. Students typically declare their initial major at the end of the freshman year. However, there is a strong overlap between the programs in the EECS Department up till the end of the sophomore year. As a result the EECS Department is planning to formally implement a "common" sophomore year plan which will allow students to take classes from all the department degree programs. Students must declare a major at the end of the freshman year, but students following this program would be able to switch their major with no problem until the end of the sophomore year.

What type of advising do students get?

Students are assigned specific freshman advisors. These advisors have special training in freshman problems and will regularly meet with the student in the freshman year. Once the student declares a major in EECS they are typically assigned an advisor who will remain with them for the rest of their career in the department. Current student advisors.

Do undergraduates have much faculty contact?

All EECS faculty teach classes and regularly interact with undergraduates; however, outside of the ENGR 131 Introduction to Programming class freshman do not have much interaction with the EECS Department's faculty unless they are taking an advanced class. In addition to regular faculty we do use teaching assistants to handle recitation sections and laboratory sections for many classes. Finally we have several classes taught by Adjunct Faculty who have special expertise. For example, Dr. Ponchak from NASA Glenn Research Center taught a class in Electromagnetic Field Theory in the Spring 2001 semester.